It has long been known to use belts for conveying bulk materials and other conveyed materials. Here, the belts are installed in conveying systems, joined into an endless loop. These systems have drive rollers or drums to drive the belt, and further support, deflection or reversing rollers or drums to guide the belt, support it and also to deflect it again for example at the ends of the system, that is, to turn it around. For guiding and for driving the conveyor belt by means of this drum, contact between the underside of the belt and the upper side (surface) of the drums needs to be over as large a surface area as possible. It is also possible for the conveyed material to be unloaded at these reversal points, in that the conveyor belt is turned around over the reversing drum and so the conveyed material falls from the conveyor belt.
It is also known for the conveyor belts to be manufactured in an open configuration and only to be joined, at a connecting point, to give the endless conveyor belt of the conveying system in a subsequent manufacturing step. If a conveyor belt is made in a plurality of parts, then a plurality of open belt segments are joined at a corresponding number of connecting points to give an endless conveyor belt.
Here, it is conventional to provide the ends of the belts or belt segments with mechanical connecting elements which serve to connect the ends quickly and simply, to give a joined belt. These connecting elements are connected, on their side remote from the connecting point, to the reinforcing members of the belt or belt segment by means of clamping. The clamping is set up such that it can transmit the tensile forces permitted for the reinforcing members.
It is disadvantageous here that these mechanical connecting elements are of rigid construction by comparison with the rest of the belt and so cannot abut against the surface of the drums in the same manner as the surfaces of the belt that are of resilient construction. As a result, the reinforcing members of the belt are not in the neutral phase at these points, and the mechanical connecting points are put under bending and shear forces each time they run around a drive or deflection roller, which act in particular on the reinforcing members of the belt. In this way, the use of mechanical connecting elements represents a problem in the case of conveyor belts, since the service life of the belt is consequently reduced as a result of the fact that the reinforcing members are permanently and repeatedly kinked each time they run around.
This disadvantage has a particularly pronounced effect if the diameter of the drums is small by comparison with the length of the belt end body or belt segment end body in the longitudinal direction A. Thus, for these reasons known belt end bodies or belt segment end bodies for large deflection radii are usual. For example, when conveyor belts are used as a sliding belt for skids, however, relatively small deflection drums typically having a diameter of for example approximately 180 mm are used. With a diameter of this kind, the known constructions of mechanical connecting elements result in early breakage of the reinforcing members because of the dynamic loads.